Region

CAIRO — Abdel-Fattah Al Sisi, the Egyptian military chief who last summer removed the elected Islamist president, announced Wednesday that he has resigned from the military and will run for president in elections scheduled for next month.

In a nationally televised speech, Sisi appeared in his military uniform, saying that it was the last time he would wear it because he was giving it up “to defend the nation” by running for president. He said he was “responding to a call from the people”.

Egyptian law says only civilians can run for president, so his resignation from the military, as well as his posts of military chief and defence minister, was a required step.

Sisi is widely expected to win the vote, after months of nationalist fervour since he removed Mohamed Morsi, who in 2012 became Egypt’s first freely elected and civilian president. The ouster in July came after massive protests demanding Morsi go after only a year in office amid public resentment that his Muslim Brotherhood was monopolising power.

Since then, the military-backed interim government has waged a fierce crackdown on Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, arresting thousands of members and killing hundreds of protesters in clashes. At the same time, militants have waged a campaign of attacks on police and the military, and Sisi has repeatedly declared a war on terrorism.

In his address Wednesday night, Sisi gave a campaign-style speech, promising he intended to build a “modern and democratic Egypt”. He spoke of the challenges facing the country, including millions of unemployed and a “weak economy”.

In an apparent goodwill gesture despite the crackdown, he promised “no exclusion. ... I extend my hand to all at home and abroad — all those who have not been convicted”.

“There will be no personal score-settling,” he said.

However, on the ground there have been no signs of any move towards reconciliation with Morsi’s supporters and the Brotherhood, once the country’s strongest political force. Authorities on Wednesday announced the latest in a series of mass trials of suspected Islamists, including the top leader of the Brotherhood Mohammed Badie, on murder and other charges in connection to violence the past months.

Morsi supporters have continued near daily protests against Sisi and the interim government. On Wednesday, students in several universities, most of them Islamists, held protests that turned into clashes with security forces. An 18-year-old student was killed in the violence at Cairo University, the health ministry said.

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s premier warned Wednesday that April legislative polls may be delayed as he pushed for a controversial election law to be amended after electoral chiefs suddenly quit complaining of political interference.

The electoral officials are pressing for the same reform to the law ahead of the scheduled April 30 vote, amid doubts the polls can in any case be held countrywide as anti-government fighters still control a town on Baghdad’s doorstep.

Much is at stake as Prime Minister Nouri Maliki bids for a third term with his security credentials badly damaged by a surge in violence to levels not seen since 2008, and the country battles to rebuild its conflict-battered economy and boost oil production.

Diplomats have said that even though the Independent High Electoral Commission’s nine-member board resigned en masse on Tuesday the vote was unlikely to be delayed as all major political parties had agreed it had to take place on time.

But the mere prospect of a postponement has sparked concern, with Maliki warning that “if IHEC stays this way, that means... the election will be delayed”.

‘Troubles one after another’

“We will enter a tunnel we might not be able to get out of,” the premier said in his weekly televised address. “Troubles will come, one after another, against the state.”

The IHEC’s board has been frustrated with what they say is a vague provision in Iraq’s electoral law that requires parliamentary hopefuls to be “of good reputation”.

Based on that article, a judicial panel has barred several prospective lawmakers, including Maliki opponents such as former finance minister Rafa Al Essawi, with no obvious avenue of appeal.

Parliament has meanwhile reportedly ruled that the IHEC must not bar any candidates unless they have criminal convictions, a decision an electoral official said was at odds with that of the judicial panel.

Maliki called for IHEC board members to withdraw their resignations while urging parliament to pass an amendment to the law “as fast as possible”.

The IHEC’s chairman said an amendment to the disputed article could end the impasse.

“If there is any problem, they [parliament] have to amend it through legislation,” Sarbat Rashid told AFP, after holding talks with diplomats from the UN mission to Iraq, the US embassy, and the European Union mission, as well as parliament speaker Osama Al Nujaifi.

A diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while the resignations had been submitted to parliament, “I do not expect that parliament will accept them, because the timing is critical for elections”.

“Most likely, what the IHEC would like to have done, they would like the article to be amended,” the diplomat said.

“The IHEC’s problem is that they are squeezed between the judicial panel and parliament, and they are trying to extract themselves.”

The diplomat said because the resignations were unlikely to be accepted by parliament, elections were likely to go ahead next month on schedule.

The looming vote has been a factor in the rising bloodshed in recent months, analysts and diplomats say.

Maliki and other Shiite political leaders have been determined to be seen taking a hardline against militants, rather than reach out to the Sunni Arab minority in a bid to undercut long-term support for militancy.

But despite widely trumpeted operations against insurgents, bloodletting has continued, with more than 450 people killed so far this month, and upwards of 2,100 already this year, according to an AFP tally based on official reports.

And anti-government fighters have held control of the Sunni city of Fallujah, which lies just a short drive from Baghdad, for more than two months.

CAIRO — Egypt’s chief prosecutor on Wednesday ordered two trials for a total of 919 suspected Islamists on charges that include murder, pushing ahead with a series of mass tribunals of supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi despite international criticism.

The policy of mass trials sparked uproar among rights groups after a judge this week issued death sentences against more than 520 defendants on charges of killing a policeman during an attack on a police station last summer.

On Wednesday, students in several universities, most of them Islamists, held protests Wednesday against the death sentences, turning into clashes with security forces. An 18-year-old student was killed in the violence at Cairo University, the health ministry said.

Egyptian authorities are holding a series of trials in a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and other supporters of Morsi since the military removed him in July. Some 16,000 have been arrested over the past months, including most of the Brotherhood’s top leaders.

The death sentences issued Monday by a court in the city of Minya, south of Cairo, brought an outcry from rights groups and criticism from the United Nations, European Union and United States over the cursory trial, which lasted only two sessions and in which lawyers said they were denied the right to make their case or question witnesses. The sentences can be appealed, and lawyers expect them to be overturned.

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement that he was “deeply, deeply troubled, by the verdict. It simply defies logic.”

The two new trials announced Wednesday are also to be held in Minya, the state news agency MENA reported.

A judicial official said they will be headed by the same judge, Said Youssef, who also began a new mass trial of more than 680 defendants on Tuesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the press.

All told, the four trials involve 2,147 defendants.

All the trials are connected to a wave of violence in mid-August after security forces broke up two pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo. More than 600 were killed in the sit-in break-up, setting off a backlash of violence for days as suspected Morsi supporters attacked police stations, government installations and churches in towns around Egypt, leaving hundreds dead.

In one of the new trials announced Wednesday, 715 defendants, including the Muslim Brotherhood’s top leader Mohammed Badie, are charged with killing six people and attempted murder of 51 others during attacks on state institutions on August 14 in the city of Samalout. Only 160 defendants in this case are in detention. The prosecutor asked for the arrest of the rest.

In the second trial, 204 defendants, also including Badie, face charges of inciting violence. Only three are in detention in this case, in which the charges include attacking state institutions and police in Al Adawa town, also in Minya.

A court will set a date for the trials.

Badie is also a defendant in the trial of 683 defendants that began Tuesday in Minya on murder and attempted murder in connection to a separate attack on a police station that killed two policemen.

Badie, who is jailed in Cairo, is in the multiple cases because authorities accuse him of instigating the August rioting. Days after Morsi’s ouster, he gave a fiery speech to supporters at one of the Cairo sit-ins urging them to restore Morsi to office, saying: “We are his soldiers, we will defend him with our lives.”

On Wednesday, hundreds of largely Islamist university students in a number of universities protested against the mass death sentences.

At Cairo University, hundreds of students who attempted to take their protest outside the campus were met with volleys of tear gas from police. Khadiga Al Kholy, a student participating in the protest, said the police force gave no warnings before firing the tear gas, sending the students rushing back on campus.

Students responded by throwing stones and fireworks and hurling tear gas canisters back at the security forces in pitched street battles. TV footage showed security in civilian clothes detaining protesters and taking them away in blindfolds. There were also images of the security seizing fire bombs from young protesters. Kholy said police fired birdshot at the protesters.

“We wanted to escalate our protest because of those death sentences, which included university students,” she said, adding that the protesters had sought to move into a nearby public square outside the campus. “We want to break the barriers that the security forces have imposed on all the squares.”

In the Nile Delta city of Zagazig, police said students damaged the facade of an administrative building in the local university and clashed with rival students, prompting to security forces to enter the campus and arrest eight rioters.

Thousands of Morsi supporters are already arrested and most are facing trials on a number of charges, including inciting violence, and rioting.

Morsi’s Islamist supporters have continued to hold protests against his ouster. Authorities accuse the group of fomenting violence and terrorism, a claim the group denies.

The pro-Morsi camp has refused to recognise the new political roadmap installed by the military after his ouster. Presidential elections are now expected next month.

TUNIS — Tunisia’s presidential and parliamentary elections will go ahead as planned later this year despite delays in approving a new elections law, authorities said on Wednesday.

No date has yet been set for the elections, the second ballot since the 2011 uprising that ousted autocrat Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali and the first since the adoption of a new constitution praised internationally as a model for transition to democracy.

“The second elections after the 2011 vote will be more difficult because the standards will be tougher,” said Chafik Sarsar, head of the Independent Election Commission (ISIE).

“Elections should be held on time in 2014, despite all the difficulties,” he said.

Sarsar acknowledged hurdles to overcome, including the fact ISIE does not yet have a headquarters and delays to the new electoral law meant to provide a framework for running the ballot.

Three years after its revolt, Tunisia is in its final steps to full democracy, with a new constitution adopted and more political stability than in Libya and Egypt, which also ousted long-standing leaders in 2011.

After months of crisis, Islamist party Ennahda agreed to resign in January under an agreement with the secular opposition to make way for a caretaker government which is running the country until the elections.

LONDON — Former Libyan prime minister Ali Zeidan on Tuesday warned that Islamist groups were sabotaging attempts to rebuild his country in order that it become a haven for extremists, in an interview with Britain’s newspaper The Times.

Zeidan, who fled to Germany after losing a parliamentary confidence vote earlier this month, said that he was preparing to return “maybe very soon” to help restore order and repel the threat of extremism, two-and-a-half years after the killing of veteran ruler Muammar Qadhafi.

“Libya could be a base for Al Qaeda for any operation to Italy, to Britain, to France, to Spain, to Morocco, to everywhere. Weapons are everywhere, ammunition is everywhere,” the former prime minister, who was in London to meet British politicians, told the newspaper.

“My plan is to struggle to reform the state, to stabilise the situation.”

He suggested that groups such as Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood were exploiting rifts within the country he ruled for 15 months.

“These people want Libya not to be a civil state, not to be a state of law, they want it as what happened in Afghanistan,” he claimed.

Zeidan, an independent, was unable to tame former rebel militia that have carved out their own fiefdoms since the 2011 uprising that toppled the dictatorship of Qadhafi.

The no-confidence motion — triggered when a North-Korean-flagged tanker laden with crude oil from a rebel-held terminal broke through a naval blockade and escaped to sea — was approved by 124 of the 194 members of the General National Congress.

The former prime minister claimed two political groups were behind his removal as premier: the radical Wafa movement, and the Justice and Construction Party which is the political arm of the Libyan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

TRIPOLI  — At least three people were killed in fighting between rival religious sects in Lebanon’s second city on Wednesday, medical and security sources said, as violence from Syria spills over into the small Mediterranean country.

The dead in the coastal city of Tripoli included an 11-year-old boy, as well as two men, the sources said.

The long-running rivalry between Tripoli’s Sunni Muslims and members of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, has been worsened by Syria’s three-year-old conflict.

The civil war has become increasingly sectarian as mostly Sunni rebels — who represent the majority in Syria — battle President Bashar Assad, an Alawite.

That has in turn exacerbated tensions in Lebanon, which is home to Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and a number of smaller sects, and is still recovering from its own 1975-90 civil war.

At least 27 people have been killed in fighting in Tripoli over roughly the last two weeks, including one Lebanese soldier.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Washington has offered to free jailed Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard as part of an arrangement that would secure an extension of the deadlocked peace talks, army radio said Wednesday.

Citing Israeli officials, the radio said the offer was put on the table as part of a deal which would ensure Israel releases a fourth tranche of veteran Palestinian prisoners, scheduled for March 29.

Israel has cast doubt on the planned releases, citing Palestinian intransigence in the crisis-hit peace talks which are due to end on April 29.

Washington is trying to extend the deadline but the Palestinians say that if the prisoners are not freed, there will be no extension.

Pollard, a former US navy analyst, was arrested in 1985 for giving Israel thousands of secret documents about US espionage in the Arab world.

He was jailed for life, and Washington has rejected repeated Israeli efforts to secure his release. He won Israeli citizenship in 1995.

There was no comment from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki did not comment directly on the report but said there were “no plans” to release Pollard at this stage.

“Jonathan Pollard was convicted of espionage against the United States, a very serious crime, was sentenced to life in prison, and is serving his sentence,” she said in a statement.

“There are currently no plans to release Jonathan Pollard.”

Israel is due to free a fourth and final tranche of 26 prisoners this weekend under a deal that saw the relaunch of US-brokered peace talks with the Palestinians in late July 2013.

So far, it has released 78 of a promised 104, nearly all of whom had been jailed for more than 20 years.

The fourth group of prisoners has garnered fierce opposition because, for the first time, it includes 14 Arab Israelis jailed for nationalist attacks.

Israel wants the so-far inconclusive peace talks extended beyond their April 29 deadline, and ministers have warned that should the Palestinians refuse, the remaining prisoners will not be freed.

KUWAIT — Arab leaders at odds over supporting Islamists in upheavals across the Middle East have proved in no mood to reconcile at a summit this week, an outcome likely to satisfy Syria and Iran in their rivalry with regional heavyweights Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Heads of state assembled in Kuwait publicly acknowledged they needed to end quarrels that are exacerbating an already catastrophic war in Syria as well as turmoil in Egypt and Iraq.

Behind the scenes tempers appeared too frayed for any possibility of joint Arab action against Syrian President Bashar Assad, or a common line on Tehran as it seeks detente with some Gulf neighbours and a thaw with the United States.

Saudi commentator Jamal Khashoggi told Reuters that Arab nations had never been as divided. He compared the use by some states of satellite TV stations to broadcast conflicting views to the Arab world with the past, when leaders such as of Egypt and Syria used radio propaganda to win regional influence.

“We’re back to ‘my radio is more powerful than your radio’. War across the airwaves. This country slanders the other. It’s very upsetting,” said Khashoggi.

States differed not only over the Syrian civil war but also the entire Arab Spring. Some saw the 2011 revolts against autocratic rule as negative for Arabs while others thought they marked “the true course of history”.

“Bashar Assad and Iran are benefiting from this division between the Gulf countries,” said Ebtisam Qitbi, a professor of political science at the Emirates University in the United Arab Emirates. She criticised a lack of consensus on supporting Assad’s political opponents. “There are no real steps to solve the Syrian crisis. The opposition felt they were alone at this summit,” she said.

Inter-Arab disputes that stem largely from Arab Spring have weakened leading Sunni Muslim states while Shiite rival Iran tries to improve its relations without the outside world. Tehran’s Arab ally Syria, embroiled in a sectarian war that has killed 140,000 people and displaced millions, also benefits from the lack of unity.

“Differences in approach to some of the thorniest issues in the reordering of the post-Arab Spring landscape are simply too great to paper over, at least for the moment,” said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Gulf expert at the Baker Institute in the United States.

Complex rift

The disputes between states otherwise united in deploring Assad’s attempts to crush an uprising begun by unarmed civilians, add up to the most complex rift for a quarter of a century.

Arabs split into pro- and anti-Baghdad camps after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and subsequent ejection by a US-led force, marking regional diplomacy for years afterwards. But the latest disputes involve political forces energised by the Arab Spring after decades of repression, and so may last longer.

At the Kuwait summit, a closing “declaration” contained a pledge to end divisions but there was no official final joint communique, reflecting an inability to agree common positions.

Crown Prince Salman, head of the Saudi delegation, left in hours. The United Arab Emirates sent the ruler of its Fujairah emirate, not its top representative, in what analysts said was a sign the UAE was not ready to discuss its differences.

Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, whose country some in the Gulf regard as a reckless foreign policy maverick, signalled an unchanged view of the world. In his speech to the summit, he said the Arab Spring led to “hope for a better future” — a view diametrically opposed to most Gulf Arab states.

His phrase highlights one of the main quarrels dividing Arabs — Qatar’s support for the now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a movement whose republican views and use of electoral politics are seen by the hereditary rulers of many Gulf states as a potent political menace.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain accuse Qatar of interfering in their internal affairs and earlier this month withdrew their ambassadors from Doha in protest. They are furious about Qatar’s refusal of their requests for an end to what they see as a stream of seditious pro-Brotherhood propaganda broadcast by Doha-based Al Jazeera television.

Saudis ‘very firm’

The three governments are also alarmed by what they regard as Qatari meddling in Yemen. Qatar denies interfering anywhere but vows no change in its foreign policy, which appears to assume that Islamists are the future in Arab politics.

“The Saudis... wanted to be very firm with Qatar” at the summit, said a diplomat. “There are problems about the Brotherhood, the future of Egypt, Syria. Kuwait did all it could to have a consensus. But the Saudis are very firm.”

In the Syrian war, Riyadh and Doha both back Islamist groups fighting Assad’s forces, but they are rivals for influence in the political and armed wings of the opposition. In turn, Assad gets political support from Iraq and Algeria, weapons from old ally Russia, and military backing and advice from Iran.

Qitbi said that in a recent battle in Syria’s Yabroud town north of Damascus, the Qataris told Islamist groups which they fund to pull out of the fighting, apparently to irritate the Saudis. The area later fell to the Syrian army.

Other disputes involve accusations from Baghdad of Saudi and Qatari backing for Islamist insurgents in Iraq’s Anbar province. They deny the assertions.

Yet further differences exist over what many Gulf states regard as interference in their affairs by Iran, locked in a struggle for regional influence with Sunni rival Saudi Arabia.

Oman, and to a lesser extent Qatar, appear to view with equanimity Iran’s efforts to return to the international mainstream by allaying fears over its nuclear programme. Tehran says the work is peaceful but the West fears it is a cover for a bomb programme.

Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have accused Tehran of stoking subversion within their Shiite communities, and with the UAE they are uneasy about negotiations on ending the nuclear dispute between Tehran and world powers.

The summit host, Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, urged states to overcome the rifts he said were blocking Arab initiatives. “The dangers around us are enormous and we will not move towards joint Arab action without our unity and without casting aside our differences,” he said.

Qatar’s Tamim appeared to chide Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shite, for stigmatising the country’s Sunni minority which tends to see him as a pawn of Iran.

A few words later, Tamim appeared to have a message for Egypt, which has declared the Brotherhood — expelled from power last July by the army — as a terrorist organisation. Riyadh issued the same declaration on the Brotherhood this year.

Arabs should not attach the label of terrorism “to those who differ politically with us, because that would proliferate terrorism rather than isolating it”,
 he said.

KUWAIT CITY — Qatar’s ruler on Tuesday criticised Iraq’s Shiite-led government and Egyptian authorities in an address to the opening session of an Arab summit in Kuwait, a move that is likely to add a new layer to tension in the region.

Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani’s criticism was not the only manifestation of inter-Arab differences surfacing in the Kuwait summit.

The representative of the Syrian opposition decried that he was not given Syria’s seat, as was the case in last year’s summit. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdel-Aziz, standing in for King Abdullah, said he was puzzled by the move.

The Qatari ruler also criticized fellow Arab leaders for not following through on a Qatari proposal made a year ago to set up a $1 billion fund to help the Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem, defiantly stating that his tiny but superrich nation will go ahead with the $250 million it has already pledged.

A resolution to create the fund was adopted by last year’s Arab summit held in Qatar.

Sheikh Tamim also renewed calls for a small Arab summit to be held try to resolve differences between the Hamas group, which rules the Gaza Strip, and the Western-backed Fatah group in the West bank. Qatar supports Hamas.

Without naming Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, Tamim criticised what he said were attempts to sideline entire segments of that Arab nation, a reference to Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority. His criticism of Iraq’s government follow recent comments by Maliki in which he accused Qatar and Saudi Arabia of supporting Sunni militants in Iraq.

“It’s about time for Iraq to emerge from the vicious circle of violence and differences. That cannot come about through the sidelining of entire society segments or accusing them of terrorism if they demand equality and inclusion,” he said.

Vice President Khudeir Al Khuzaie, a Shiite, is representing Iraq in the summit.

Tamim also called on Egypt to start a “political dialogue”, an implicit criticism of the crackdown there against the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that Qatar backs and of which Islamist President Mohamed Morsi is a member.

The military removed Morsi last July and there has been a massive crackdown against the Brotherhood, with the arrest of thousands and the killing of hundreds of its supporters. Morsi and leaders of the Brotherhood are in detention and some are in court on charges that carry the death penalty.

The criticism of Egypt is likely to further strain relations with Cairo at a time when Qatar’s own relations with heavyweight Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — its partners in the Gulf Cooperation Council — are fraught with tension. Egypt and the three Arab nations have withdrawn their ambassadors from Qatar.

Qatar has reacted with dismay at the diplomatic gestures but insists it will push ahead with its own policies.

Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid Bin Mohammed Al Attiyah has said his country will “follow a path of its own” and that the independence of its “foreign policy is simply non-negotiable”.

Qatar, a US ally and home to one of Washington’s largest military bases abroad, has in recent years played an outsized role in Arab affairs, spearheading efforts to resolve the Syrian crisis and mediating in some of Sudan’s internal conflicts.

At the heart of Egypt’s dispute with Qatar is its perceived support for Morsi. Cairo’s government also blames the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television network for inciting violence.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates complain that Qatar meddles in their internal affairs by supporting the opposition — the Muslim Brotherhood in the case of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.

They also want Qatar to stop supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen, an impoverished Arabian Peninsula nation that is of strategic significance to Saudi Arabia. And they want Qatar to make sure that its arms shipments to guerrillas fighting the Syrian government do not wind up in the hands of terrorists.

The representative of the Syria opposition, Ahmad Al Jarba, made a desperate plea for help from the Arab leaders.

“What we wanted and still want from you is a decisive position for support,” he said. Opposition spokesman Louay Safi later told reporters on the sidelines of the summit that with the Syrian regime’s perceived indifference to a negotiated settlement, Arab nations must fully support the opposition politically, economically and militarily.

BEIRUT — Syrian rebels seized a Mediterranean coastal village Tuesday as they pushed to consolidate their presence in a key regime bastion near the Turkish border, a monitoring group said.

The government denied the claim, saying fighting was still under way in the area.

The claimed capture of Samra, in Latakia province, comes a day after rebels seeking to topple President Bashar Assad seized the area around Kasab, the last government-held border crossing with Turkey.

In retaliation, the army pounded rebel positions in the northwestern province, heartland of Assad’s Alawite sect and scene of fierce fighting since Friday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Rebels, including from the jihadist Al Nusra Front, “took control of Samra village in Latakia province early Tuesday,” said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

Samra is located in a valley near the Turkish border, and gives the rebels access to the sea.

Latakia is also important because of its location on the coast, and losing it would be a tough blow for the regime, said local activist Omar Al Jeblawi.

“The area is so strategic to the regime, that whenever fighting does break out in Latakia, the army pulls back from other areas in order to redeploy here,” he told AFP.

Jeblawi said “thousands of opposition fighters” have deployed in the Latakia region.

“The advances are quick. And the takeover of Kasab was only the beginning of the road to liberating Latakia.”

A security source in Damascus denied that Samra had fallen, saying “fierce fighting” was still under way.

“The Syrian army is completely in control... of the mountains” overlooking Samra. It is impossible [for the rebels] to take over the area,” the source said.

Speaking to AFP by phone, a rebel fighter in the area attributed the opposition’s advances to the withdrawal two weeks ago of the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Since early January, ISIL had been fighting moderates and Islamists in the opposition camp in much of northern Syria, leaving thousands dead.

“We had our differences with ISIL, but now they are gone, so we can work as one hand,” said the rebel, who identified himself only as Samer.

He tried to dispel fears the fighting in Latakia may take on an overtly sectarian character, saying “our problem is not with religious groups. We just want the regime out”.

In a previous round of Latakia fighting last year, Human Rights Watch accused rebels and ISIL of waging a “planned attack on the civilian population” of Alawite villages.

Since Friday, some 170 fighters on both sides have been killed, the observatory said.

More than 146,000 people have been killed and nearly half the population displaced in Syria’s three-year war.